


Contractual Obligations

by iohannes (amare)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dr Doom made them do it, Drugged Sex, Dubious Consent, Fuck Or Die, M/M, Post-The Winter Soldier, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:42:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2376872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amare/pseuds/iohannes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Captain Rogers is compromised. He and the Avengers were dispatched to defend against another of Doctor Doom's attacks, and was caught unawares by a new compound—"</i> </p><p> </p><p>  <i>"Magic," said Clint, who was lurking in the corner, sounding totally matter-of-fact.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>"—A compound," Fury said, speaking over him in the exact same tone.</i></p><p> </p><p>Several years after Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Bucky's got to take care of Steve Rogers, who really should have updated his paperwork.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the warnings, guys. The dubcon is mild and due to the nature of sex pollen, but the state of Bucky and Steve's relationship contributes to it too. It'll all get resolved, but I don't want it to be a nasty surprise. Also, the tags will expand/change as the story continues.
> 
> Thanks to bluesy, Macie, and Scout (and Simone) for their help along the way.

Clint Barton texted him— _touchdown in tminus ten, gets sum pants on_ —nine minutes before a black speck appeared in the sky above Bucky's Miami safe house. The jet expanded into a recognizable shape as it got closer, and the gale from its propulsion engines gently bowed trees used to hurricane winds. Standing just outside his front door, gear packed and slung over his shoulder, Bucky saluted Clint with a metal middle finger and waited for him to jog up the drive. 

"I'm glad to see you're wearing pants," Clint said, smiling from behind sunglasses. "I like 'em. Real utilitarian." 

Bucky unceremoniously shoved the bag at him. He didn't offer up his Colt, keeping it close to his side. He had to half-shout to be heard over the running jet in his goddamn yard, stirring up dust so high it silhouetted them both. "You know, Fury could have just called me in. I don't need fanfare." 

"Jet's faster. You're needed in New York. Urgently." Whatever it was, Clint's face read seriousness, but they wouldn't have bothered to send an Avenger all the way to Florida if there was a ticking bomb somewhere. And Fury did love throwing his weight around, especially now that he could show off again. 

"Mission?" 

"Sorta. We can talk on the ride." 

He was all kinds of closed-mouth, though, once they were strapped in and flying faster than anything had a right to. That high up, all Bucky could see below was city lights between patches of dark land. Clint did offer a round of cards, but he kept making Bucky repeat himself over the headset, either because his hearing aids were having trouble or because he knew Bucky'd get pissed off enough to go silent, and then he buried himself in his phone.

 Eventually, Bucky tilted his head back against the seat and shut his eyes to curb a creeping impulse to look out the window. Almost zero visibility out there, which was unsettling. He kept a hand on the Colt. His file didn't list anything like _acrophobia_ , but Bucky entertained what he thought was a reasonable level of alertness when suspended thousands of feet in the air. The file _did_ say he didn't have the best history with heights, but he couldn't actually remember falling, except into the Potomac. It was easier to listen to the wind and the crackling exchanges from the cockpit than to think about it, so he did that. 

Not quite two hours after being picked up in Florida, which broke every rule of physics Bucky sort of knew, they landed in Manhattan—rather than outside of Poughkeepsie, as was usual. The Poughkeepsie facility was SHIELD's newest, tucked away with a resortlike exterior, and in no way reflective of paramilitary efficiency until you got inside. This building—functional cement, a few sleeker elements, top of the line tech integrated into the very building, furnished by Stark, and lots of bulletproof glass—didn't pretend to be anything but conspicuous. 

Bucky hadn't been to Manhattan in years. He took in the busy expanse of nighttime New York from his vantage, zipping up his tactical jacket before he stepped from the chopper onto the rooftop of SHIELD HQ. 

Fury did not come out to greet him. A few agents did, ushering them to an elevator. Clint strode ahead of them all as they moved indoors. He maintained an off-key whistle and subtly checked over his shoulder to make sure Bucky hadn't climbed something and vanished. They'd learned that lesson early on, but so had Bucky. 

"When did Fury start sending you out as a chaperone?" Bucky asked, catching up to Clint. "Or did you volunteer?" 

He smiled so wide his cheeks pushed against the bottom of his sunglasses. "Why'd you move all the way to fucking Miami? That's the real mystery here."  
  
"I like Cuban food." In reality, Fury offered him the use of one of four approved locations, all within fifty miles of a SHIELD base, and Bucky picked the least odious. SHIELD was very attached to the eastern seaboard, or he might have tried for California. Florida was as far away from New York and DC as he could get, given the options. And the oppressive heat didn't hurt. 

"Hey, you been to the Glades yet?" Clint asked. 

"Once, for a mission. You still haven't answered my question."  
  
The elevator they stood in, resplendent with four other bored agents, dinged open. Fury's office demanded a certain mood, one that did not allow for enormous firearms, so Bucky handed his rifle off with stiff reticence. Clint, bowless and packing at least two knives under his jeans, leaned against the glass doors as the biometric scanner worked over him. Bucky didn't blink as they pulled up his prints and scanned his eye, but the red laser that traced his metal arm and declared him clean of poisons, explosives, and recording devices made him clench that hand into a fist. 

Clint's face flashed on the ID screen first—level-five clearance—and then Bucky's—level two—was the shot from two years ago when he officially signed on with SHIELD. In it, his hair was lank and in his face, days' worth of stubble making him look surly and a little feral. The glint of crazy in his eyes did not help. In the intervening years, Bucky'd managed to look a little less—that. His hair was still too long for James Buchanan Barnes' tastes, which was more intentional than he'd admit, and he used an electric razor that missed as much as it shaved, but he looked like a human being instead of a junkyard dog. Long sleeves and a glove were all it took to make him inconspicuous.

Once the scanner cleared them both, the doors unlocked with a quiet hiss of depressurization, and Fury lifted his head from a tablet he was pursuing at his desk. 

"Barnes," he said evenly. 

Fury looked grim, as he usually did in Bucky's presence, and he was almost convinced it was his usual expression and had nothing to do with present company. He kept skimming over the tablet, finger sliding back and forth, and offered a silent sigh.

Flying him in like this—it didn't look good. Bucky assumed he was there for an emergency op, maybe something with the Avengers if Clint was involved. He knew they'd lay out special treatment if it meant making him more amenable to working with the Avengers, but he'd been refusing to stew over the options until he had confirmation. Now it looked less like Fury was finally going to insist on joining SHIELD on a permanent basis, joining a team and maybe getting his clearance level jacked up a few notches. It looked like he was going to impart shitty news.

"I assume this isn't a standard op, sir," Bucky said. 

"No, it isn't." He keyed in a code and a drawer in his mammoth desk slid open. He pulled a paper file out of it and gave it over without fanfare, though the grip of his fingers took a second longer than it should have to release. 

Immediately he saw it was about Rogers. He didn't betray the weary anger that rose up in him, just flipped through the first page of Rogers' file and went on to the second. It was a thick document, paperclipped together in chunks, some basic stats and his clearance level—eight. Two evaluations. Some of it was covered in Rogers' own handwriting—a lot of it, he saw as he went on. Lots of legal jargon. 

He saw his own name a few times, _James Buchanan Barnes_ written in Rogers' kindergarten teacher print, and paused. He was listed as Rogers' next of kin, emergency contact, and proxy. 

Bucky looked at the date stamped onto the cover, just in case he missed something and Rogers filled this out in 1945. It was dated mid-2015, when SHIELD was starting to glue itself back together free of HYDRA. Fury was still a ghost, Bucky was only narrowly in from the cold, and Stark wasn't taking anyone's phone calls. 

Rogers had time to have updated it since. Even when he was essentially mute and slept an average of four hours a week, Bucky could see how much Rogers wanted his friend back, and in the ensuing years, Bucky's tepid response to his overtures made it obvious he was not going to get him. Maybe Rogers hadn't had the time to revise his paperwork, or forgot. 

Steve Rogers didn't forget anything. Neither did Bucky, once they had weaned him off SSRIs. Eventually, Bucky put the file down and asked, "Why are you showing me this?" 

Fury studied him with his inscrutable eye for a short moment. "Captain Rogers is compromised. He and the Avengers were dispatched to defend against another of Doctor Doom's attacks, and was caught unawares by a new compound—" 

"Magic," said Clint, who was lurking in the corner, sounding totally matter-of-fact. 

"—A compound," Fury said, speaking over him in the exact same tone. "It's of unknown origin and composition. The lab is working on it." 

"It hit a few civilians," Clint said. "It burns hard and fast for us ordinary humans, but Steve's body is breaking it down all fucked up." 

The Avengers had gone after Doom the previous afternoon. Bucky ate a sandwich and watched some of the coverage until he determined he was not going to be engaging, and then he'd switched to a documentary on orcas. He did see what must have been the compound: it disbursed from a fancy canister, went off like a flash bomb and enveloped some people cowering nearby in a cloud of bright powder. Rogers waded in to get them to safety, and his face and uniform were dusted and streaked with pink.

"You've had over twenty-four hours, and this is all you've got?" 

Fury did not look impressed. Bucky reminded himself he was supposed to be passive and nonthreatening. "Banner's been at work at this all night, even Stark's on it, and the best they can do is confirm that we have no idea what the hell we're dealing with. Readings from Captain Rogers are inconclusive. It's… difficult to get close to him."  
  
"Exposure?" Bucky guessed.

In the corner, Clint snorted. Fury shook his head. 

"Rogers didn't go to medical, even though he knew it was in his system and affecting civilians. He stayed behind to help with evacuation and clean-up protocols. We didn't get a chance to examine him before the symptoms kicked in, and now they've progressed to a point where we can't get anything done." 

He mulled that over. Fury was dancing around something, around asking him for something. Bucky knew that given his and Rogers' recent history, Fury assumed it was a risky prospect to do so. But he wasn't a complete asshole. He'd authorize means to treat Rogers if the alternative was suffering from the effects of a shitty magic toxin. "If you're asking permission to treat him as a proxy, you have it, unless it's experimental tech. I'd want the rundown—" 

Fury's expression slipped into a grimace. It nearly startled Bucky, and he shut up. "The treatment is known to us; the civilians dosed with the compound are all recovering. You've guessed that we need your permission as Rogers' proxy and next of kin to proceed with it, but." He stopped and rested his forearms on the desk like he was bracing himself, staring at Bucky levelly. He saw the minute motions of Fury's tiny headshake. "Frankly, Barnes, you're not gonna like it." 

"As opposed to my enthusiasm over being forced into responsibility for Captain Rogers. Sir."

"You're gonna like it even less than that," Fury promised. "Right now, you're the only play Captain Rogers has got, or I wouldn't ask." 

Bucky had a moment of bitter admiration for Fury's tactics. 

"Show him the report, boss," Clint urged, subdued now, which made Bucky's hackles rise. 

Fury raised a hand to stall him. "Agent Barnes is susceptible to only a certain amount of manipulation, Barton. I'm going to tell him before we push our luck." 

"Tell me what?" Bucky asked, giving Clint a narrow glance over his shoulder. Clint shrugged, but he looked serious as hell. "How sick is he?" Bucky went through an immediate list of probable favors they'd ask and settled on a blood transfusion. Whatever patchworked shit clogging Bucky's veins was a dark cousin to Rogers' serum, and it might— _might_ —flush whatever was making him sick, or it might cause an epic reaction if the serum tried to fight back. He'd say yes, but no one was going to be happy with the prospect. 

"You can walk out. SHIELD takes the agreement of its agents very seriously. Whatever decision you make will be respected." Bucky did not so much as blink. "But the facts are that Steve Rogers is on his way to a heart attack and major organ shutdown. His body can't seem to fight the compound on its own, and the only known curative method is intercourse with a partner."

Fury had the decency to say it neutrally, though it must have tasted bad to him. The words washed over Bucky in such an impersonal monotone that the meaning took half a second to catch up. 

"What the fuck?" Bucky asked.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for everyone's patience! I hope some questions about the hows and whys are answered in this chapter, but even more will be addressed further into the fic.
> 
> Thanks to [meetcutes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/meetcutes/pseuds/meetcutes) and my usual gang <3.

Bucky's first action as Steve Rogers' reluctant proxy was to have him moved to somewhere with a real bed and no restraints, as apparently he'd been strapped to a cot in medical. Fury passed the order on as soon as Bucky gave it. He had no plans to take his _authority_ any further. This wasn't his problem, Fury said he could back out if he wanted, and he definitely wanted.

But then, being that he was a cold sonofabitch, Fury read him the regs. Literally no one else was authorized to take Bucky's place. Strictly speaking, literally no one was authorized to do it at _all_ , but with Bucky, they could squeak by in a legal gray area. Not that Fury put it so frankly: he talked circles around how fucked up it was.

"Captain Rogers refused all offers of medical intervention right up until he stopped speaking at all," Fury explained. "Now we're looking at drastic measures to save his life."

Rogers hadn't given permission, Bucky hadn't given permission, but a piece of paper Rogers filled out years ago was supposedly going to make that okay.

As a final salvo, Fury read the mission report and stats on Rogers' vitals.

"This isn't a case of simple hyperarousal. Captain Rogers is at risk for a massive coronary event, and—" he glanced down at the chart and quirked his mouth humorlessly, "—his other organs aren't doing too great either. Blood pressure readings are inconclusive, but suggest extreme hypertension and an arrhythmic pulse. He's destroyed every IV line they've come near him with, he won't drink, he won't eat, and he's sweating ounces of fluid every hour. When he's got the energy, he's throwing himself against various agents or steel doors, and when he doesn't, he's collapsed and shivering on the floor." Fury's terse voice didn't waver.

So much for respecting his agent's choices. Bucky wasn't going to stare down that kind of a nasty end, be responsible for letting Rogers' heart explode inside of his chest and forever being known for the murder of Captain fucking America, never mind that Doom was the one who dosed him in the first place.

Fury's expression as he waited for Bucky's final word was unflinching. But then, if he'd the decency to look ashamed, Bucky would have been shocked.

"Fine," he said, and left the office without waiting for dismissal. Clint followed him.

As the one person Bucky was known to work with somewhat agreeably, the one person he could be described as getting along with, Clint was clearly there to pacify him. It was a good thing, because he would have reacted terribly to anyone else dogging his steps after that bullshit, like a hand on the back of his neck telling him to obey, that the cost of noncompliance was too high. It sounded unnervingly familiar, and Fury would have known it did.

Bucky had trouble with authority figures. It said so, right in his file.

He took the stairs instead of the elevator, hoping to burn off some of the bottlenecked anger. He took them two at a time, sometimes three, at a consistently brisk pace, and Clint matched him well enough, boots thumping as he tromped along.

When Clint's breathing began to labor, Bucky's mouth twisted into a brittle smirk. "So who's your proxy?" he asked, nearly sounding like himself. "Wait—it's the Widow."

"I'm not telling you my fucking confidential information, man. But I will say, it's not a proxy, it's a list. In case the first choice refuses or is incapacitated or something. I had to sign like eight-hundred contingency forms. You will too, if you ever join us full-time."

That made Bucky pause. Metaphorically. He'd never had to assign a proxy or next of kin because he wasn't granted that level of autonomy. If shit hit the fan, he figured they'd just shoot him in the head or stick him into SHIELD's version of cryo.

If Rogers had named someone else, one singular person, he'd be fucking them instead. But he hadn't, and he'd left the responsibility of saving his life through extremely dubious means solely in Bucky's lap.

He shelved that for later. When he was going to make it evident to Rogers that his pining needed to be kept out of official paperwork and as far away from Bucky as possible. He was never particularly cold to Rogers, not much more than he was to the other Avengers, excepting Clint, but his monosyllabic interaction had been enough to put a pin in Rogers' barely concealed hope. To his credit, the last year or so, Rogers acted less like a dog straining against a chain and more like someone quietly eroded to resignation. He was polite and professional and did not stare or avert his gaze if Bucky was in the room. He was—tolerable. More than Stark or Thor, that was for sure. He called Bucky "Barnes," and the last time they had seen each other he offered a book recommendation.

Bucky had a few memories of Rogers before his transformation, one or two from after, and he'd even regained some the wiped memories of their first encounters in DC. But it felt like footage from a movie more than genuine recollection. There was very little associated emotion, although sometimes he had to fight not to call him "Steve."

Before he started rehabilitation, there was a consuming drive to know who Rogers was and why he'd rung a bell inside Bucky's head. It seemed like he was the root of why there was a bell to be rung in the first place, and Bucky'd spent weeks poring over every document and piece of footage related to their relationship he could. He'd tried to unlock more memories, nearly bashed his head against the wall to rattle something loose, but not much came. When he started to become a person with a name and a new foundation of memories, and realized how uncomfortable he felt with the burden of Steve Rogers on his back, he forcibly let it go. If any little flashes of Rogers appeared, most it was of a small, vulnerable person who bore little resemblance to the large, costumed superhero Bucky generally tried to avoid.

He didn't hate Rogers. Ambivalence, sure. Even now, being forced to do this, he still couldn't dredge up hate. SHIELD planned for a thousand scenarios, but he didn't think they could have envisioned something magical sex powder, so Rogers had no idea what he'd nominated him for.

Initially he hadn't wanted to work with him, especially when Rogers was still making frequent attempts to connect. When Fury declared him fit for duty on a probationary basis, Bucky's requests were that he run as a solo agent, doing missions alone or with strike team backup, and had the freedom to make calls on his own ops. He was accountable; he'd do debriefings and therapy and what the fuck ever, but he wasn't going to be added to a team roster—especially with the Avengers. Now that there was distance between them, figurative and literal, though, Bucky could consider doing joint ops without feeling immediate distaste. Fury wouldn't have to order him into it.

But now he was supposed to go into a private room and fuck Steve Rogers, which threw a wrench into the whole situation.

They were finally at his floor, and Bucky pushed the access door open without giving himself a chance to hesitate. He'd agreed already. It was done.

"Did they ask him about me?" Bucky asked, pausing in the hall before they went any further. He was going to send Clint away too, if he tried to linger. If there was one thing Bucky was sure of, Rogers needed privacy after being surrounded by agents and scientists and people keeping him restrained for God knew how long. Bucky didn't fancy fucking him in front of an audience either.

Clint shook his head. "He hasn't been very lucid since last night, when he turned down everyone who volunteered. Your name, uh, obviously didn't come up then, and I don't think anyone bothered to check in with him about who was listed on his paperwork."

That somehow made it worse. He was distantly aware of his body's instinctive response of disgust, fear, rage. It centered in his stomach and prickled the back of his neck, the tell-tale signs his shrink had basically drilled him into being able to recognize. Outwardly, he only nodded once. "Is he completely nonverbal?" he asked.

Down the hall, someone opened the door from inside Rogers' room, and Bucky tensed. It was a woman in nurse's scrubs, SHIELD ID clipped to her breast pocket and stethoscope around her neck. He couldn't see far into the room before she shut the door behind her, but Rogers didn't appear to be trying to make a break for it, and she did not seem in a hurry to get anywhere.

"I don't know. Last time I saw him was yesterday. Kept trying to say there was nothing wrong with him when he couldn't stop squirming and obviously had a fever. At one point he managed to yell at Stark, when he kept trying to ninja blood samples." Clint offered a sliver of a dark grin.

Bucky thought about asking more, to root out what he wanted to know, which was if Rogers would have any damn idea what was happening. The eventuality behind the door was something he had to deal with, not Clint. Better to keep the two as removed as possible.

"You've done enough," he said. "Go get some sleep."

Clint slapped a quick hand on his shoulder and squeezed once before backing away.

The nurse was coming up the hall, and she finally noticed him skulking near the access door. Her face registered no surprise. She slowed to a halt about five feet from him and flipped the end of her ponytail over her shoulder. The pattern on her scrubs had Mickey Mouse all over it, combined with pastel geometric shapes. It clashed with her laminated ID. She looked tired, lines of tension by her mouth, but calm.

"Agent Barnes, we've prepped the room and Captain Rogers to Director Fury's specifications. If you could get some fluid into him—that's crucial at this point, and he's too confused and belligerent to do it on his own. Right now he's weak but definitely, um, determined."

The mission report included one photo of Rogers post-exposure. He was holding his shield over his groin in a way that was painfully obvious, and Bucky could see the flush on his cheeks even with the mask on. It said the effects worsened every hour, so God knew what he looked like now.

"Is he verbal at all?" Bucky asked her.

She hesitated. "I don't—"

"Can Captain Rogers give consent?" Bucky asked point-blank. "Will he know who the hell I am?"

"Honestly, I can't say for sure. He's stopped responding to simple commands."

She was awfully polite; Rogers forcibly refused whatever food they put in front of him, and once he'd gotten delirious, tried to fight and/or kiss any agent who went near him until he'd tired out.

"Is anyone else in the room?"

"A few agents."

Bucky passed her and strode up the hallway. He did not hurry. His pulse was well within his range of normal. He opened the door to the room and stepped inside. He could smell Rogers' sweat even though he wasn't present in the sitting room. SHIELD had luxurious accommodation for visiting scientists, dignitaries, even agents like him. This was one of the generic suites they'd set up, and Bucky passed the bar, the couches, the giant plasma TV, and the kitchen to get to the master bedroom.

Three agents stood at various posts inside of it, and one of them revealed relief when Bucky stepped over the threshold. Rogers was hunched in a corner, sweaty and wearing only the thick sweatpants they gave every agent for PT, face pushed against his drawn-up knees. He was trembling.

"Dismissed," Bucky said, swallowing his nausea.

Rogers' head popped up when he heard Bucky's voice, and his face did not shift into recognition. He looked dazed and wasn't even flushed anymore, just pale with chapped lips. All of his blood was doing its best to keep circulation despite a straining heart, Bucky knew. The three agents left the room in a hurry, and Bucky crouched and started working the zipper on his own jacket. The mission report said skin-to-skin contact was essential. He couldn't just jerk Rogers off with his metal hand or even—fuck him with a condom.

Rogers' eyes could barely track him as he came closer. His blond hair looked darker with sweat. He didn't smell bad, just spicy and male, ripe enough to permeate the room. Fresh sweat was better than old, if he had to deal with it. Bucky took the jacket off and used his bare human hand to hold his chin steady and force eye contact. Rogers' whole body shuddered upon being touched.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked slowly.

Rogers' eyes went wide, and then he tilted his head to trap Bucky's hand between his chin and shoulder. He gave a quiet grunt and let his head rest against his trapped fingers, moving his neck a little to get Bucky's hand within range of his mouth.

"No, Rogers." He whimpered at that, shoulders rolling. Bucky pushed his head up and secured it with his other hand. He could vaguely feel the pressure of Rogers' skull cupped in his metal palm. "Do you know who I am?"

This time, Bucky refused to let him look away. He blinked a few times and tested the force of Bucky's hold on him, but eventually something cleared in his expression, and he said, "Bucky," in a tone that suggested wonder.

"That's right. It's me." Rogers' head started to drop, and Bucky let him do what he wanted that time. The relief of being recognized took some of the edge off, but one word wasn't Rogers signing off on the whole thing. "You're an asshole."

He slid an arm around Rogers' waist and hefted him up. They weren't going to do this in a corner on the floor; the bed was huge and white and there were supplies stationed on both of the bedside nightstands. Rogers couldn't really support his own weight, but he seemed to enjoy the amount of contact. He did try to push off and walk on his own volition after a moment or two, but Bucky dumped him onto the bed before he could take that very far.

"Bucky," Rogers said again.

"Yeah," he said. He was going to engage with whatever amount of awareness Rogers had.

Rogers tried to sit up, and Bucky planted a hand on his chest to stop him. He'd just flop down again, too weak to hold himself up. The touch prompted a long, low moan and another jerk of his hips. It was impossible not to notice the thick line of Rogers' dick in those sweatpants—it was almost absurd looking.

"How long have you had these on?" Bucky asked, snapping the waistband to illustrate what he meant. He felt a little bad when Rogers' eyes rolled back and he puffed out what sounded like a pained exhale. "Okay," he said, increasing the pressure of his hand on Rogers' chest, as he seemed to like that.

In response, Rogers raised weak arms to traverse what he could reach of Bucky—mostly his arms and some of his torso, although he did manage to rake up the hem of his shirt. Bucky didn't bother to tell him no, just redirected his hands elsewhere.

Rogers spent a while dragging his palm back and forth across the metal plates on Bucky's bicep, beady, feverish gaze sluggishly tracking Bucky's face. When Bucky awkwardly stroked his chest from the dip of his collarbone down to his sternum, he closed his eyes and sighed in obvious relief. When he did it again, Rogers rubbed upwards against the motion. Bucky used the opportunity to check the thundering of his heart and frowned when it did not seem measurably decreased.

Composed Steve Rogers undulating against his hand like a cat was a little sad and a little hilarious. More than that, Bucky was aware of how he looked; he was by objective standards and definition an example of human perfection. That might have been enough for him on a good day, even if his attraction to men was incidental and his general opinion of sex was that it made him uncomfortable. He could at least masturbate, and once he got a blowjob at the only bar he'd gone to in Miami that he half-suffered through in order to get to the heady, numbing rush of endorphins. It was a test, and by his own standards, he'd passed it. He could do this. Fucking Steve didn't require Steve fucking him back—if he looked at it like a mission, or even a favor, it would be relatively easy.

It did help that Steve wasn't doing much, just lying there and occasionally moaning, rubbing his hand on Bucky's metal arm like he was hypnotized by the texture. When Bucky moved his hands to take off the sweatpants, he laid back and watched him do it. He even tried to lift his hips, and Bucky's fingers skimmed his ass as he pulled, and Steve murmured his name again.

Naked, Bucky could admit to a certain aesthetic appreciation. He was pliable, and one hand wandered down to his dick—as big as the bulge in those ugly sweatpants had implied—closing around it and squeezing once before making a miserable noise. The head of it looked uncomfortably red and almost chafed, Bucky saw when his foreskin pulled back a little, and the vein down the shaft throbbed visibly. A few pearls of fluid were beading at the tip, and his sweatpants had been sticky with it.

"No, naked's better, right?" Bucky said, gently pulling Rogers' hand away from himself. He would have tried to have gotten it out of his system himself, over probably many hours. He was lucky he healed as fast as he did.

To his surprise, Rogers actually nodded. He pushed one leg against Bucky's side, which read to him like encouragement or even a demand to get back to it. But Rogers was more alert, and he arched like a happy cat when Bucky went back to touching his chest, passing a touch over his tight nipple along the way.

"If I touch your dick, is it gonna hurt or feel good?"

Rogers didn't nod or shake his head, but he did try and pull Bucky closer. Bucky went, and he tried a loose grip around the base of the shaft, but Rogers grunted. The warm, plush feel of him was brief but oddly nice, the same moment of primal gratification when his own hand fit perfectly around the width of his cock. He was glad when Rogers' reaction meant he had to let go. His dick was firming up inside of his too-tight pants, and he needed to be hard for this, but the line of his own pleasure was treacherous.

"So it hurts," he concluded. "They said—I've got to actually fuck you, can I do that?"

Steve's fingers pressed into his arm, squeezing with surprising strength. "Yeah," he said, squirming restlessly on the covers, voice shot to hell. Some of the tension sitting low in his stomach loosened when he heard that one goddamned word. "Bucky."

There was lubricant on both the nightstands, in huge pump bottles. He didn't want to know what lab or nurse's station they'd requisitioned it from. Bucky stretched up and to the left to grab the bottle, and when he resettled himself over Steve, bloodshot blue eyes were searching for his, staring straight up at him.

"Okay," Bucky said needlessly, unable to hold his gaze but knowing it was still on him. "I'm going to finger you, if you haven't done this." He couldn't imagine when Steve would have done it; Rogers back in Brooklyn in the forties, with his oversized clothes on a reedy body, screamed virgin, and unless he was screwing one of his teammates, there was no way any fling wouldn't be sniffed out in a hot second.

Steve's legs parted wide enough for Bucky to put his hand between them, and at first he had a stupid, fumbling attempting to shove his finger right into the tight wrinkle of Steve's asshole, but the angle was all wrong. He grabbed one of the many pillows from the head of the bed and pushed it under him, and Steve resettled, choking something when Bucky tucked one finger into him in a smooth slide. Fast, because Steve needed it to be over soon before the compound could stress his body even further, but gently enough. Steve twitched around him and grabbed the back of his neck. Bucky worked his jaw and did not throw off the touch.

He slipped in another finger. Steve's cock jerked and dripped more precome, and Bucky carefully modulated his own breathing. Inside of his pants, his dick was nearly full-mast. One more finger, and he could undo his pants and get this over with. Though his body, flushing and prickling with sensation as Steve pushed down against his fingers, seemed to find it less of an ordeal than Bucky himself did.

"Bucky, no," Steve said, garbled but intelligible, and Bucky yanked his fingers out so fast he could see Steve's body gape a little. Steve curled in on himself, eyes wincing closed like it hurt, and he gasped through a few breaths with his hands over his stomach.

Horrified, Bucky was frozen and discomfited by the throbbing in his pants that made him feel feverish and sweaty and—the compound was probably in Steve's sweat, seeping from the pores in his skin, which Bucky had been touching with impunity, Christ.

"Status?" he asked, keeping his voice clear and even when it wanted to refuse to come out at all. The lube felt like it prickled his fingertips, which were suddenly very sensitive. "Do you want me to stop?"

Steve's eye's opened again, though crows feet of pain lingered at their corners. "No," he said, even more decisively than the first time. "You."

"Me?"

Whatever pain had passed over him had either started to abate or he was pushing back, because Steve pushed himself, wobbily, onto his elbows. "Touch." He seemed frustrated by the way his own mouth worked, and he pushed it out stubbornly. "You. Bucky."

Bucky put that together a few ways and disliked his body's reaction to most of them. "You want to touch me?"

Steve shifted and raised an impatient hand, his long arm reaching all the way to the button on Bucky's pants. It took a fumbling try, but he popped it free and yanked at the fabric so his zipper came down too, some of the way.

"Rogers—" he got out of his warning, before Steve reached into his briefs like he was digging for gold and grabbed his cock instead, a too-loose grip that shook Bucky to the point where he nearly bowled over. The compound was working fast, making his vision swim like they'd used one of the special tranq darts on him. If this was what Steve had been dealing with for days, Bucky didn't know how he was conscious, let alone able to get his bearings enough to demand reciprocation. "Shit."

Steve was too unsteady to balance it right on his knees, so Bucky ended up being tugged down into an odd position while Steve did his best to flop over him and get his mouth on Bucky's cock. First it was just the wet touch of his lips to the head, bumping up the shaft, Bucky's balls squeezing up tight at the attention, forcing his eyes to the ceiling instead of Steve's blond head happily working.

When he managed to fit some of Bucky inside and suck, he made a happy noise. The wet enclosure of him shot what was left of Bucky's sanity to hell, and all he had left was an nagging itch to come, to touch, and to get the hell out of there before it was too late.

It was already too late.

**Author's Note:**

> Work is a little crazy at the moment, and I'm actually supposed to be working on my fic for the movie "Push," but this planted itself in my head a while back and won't let me go until I finish. Chapter two is well underway, so it shouldn't be too long.


End file.
